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The W. Somerset Maugham Collection QUOTES

The W. Somerset Maugham Collection QUOTES

1 " The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thought; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

2 " Oh, you can’t imagine how frightfully dull is a really good man. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

3 " Reading no books, for they thought it waste of time to read, the minds of his father and mother had sunk into such a narrow sluggishness that they could interest themselves only in trivialities. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

4 " Knowledge is like the root of a tree, attaching man by its tendrils to the life about him. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

5 " She was like a prisoner so long immured that freedom dazes him, and he looks for his chains, and cannot understand that he is free. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

6 " It requires a good deal of information to discover one’s own ignorance, but to the consciousness of this the good people had never arrived. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

7 " The proper and decent basis of marriage was similarity of station, and the good, solid qualities which might be supposed endurable. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

8 " He was a bad winner and a good loser. Those who think that a man betrays his character nowhere more clearly than when he is playing a game might on this draw subtle inferences. When he had finished I called the waiter to pay for the drinks, and left them. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

9 " merciful time wraps in oblivion the most gruesome misery. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

10 " Death is hideous, but life is always triumphant; the rose and the hyacinth arise from man’s decay; and the dissolution of man is but the signal of other birth: and the world goes on, beautiful and ever new, revelling in its vigour. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

11 " THE wise traveller travels only in imagination "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

12 " Why do nice women marry dull men?” “Because intelligent men won’t marry nice women. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

13 " Of course it would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I regret what Abraham did. After all, I’ve scored by it.” He puffed luxuriously at the long Corona he was smoking. “But if I weren’t personally concerned I should be sorry at the waste. It seems a rotten thing that a man should make such a hash of life.” I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight? "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

14 " is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

15 " A man who stands akimbo on the top of the Ten Commandments need bow the knee to no earthly potentate. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

16 " he is the typical Englishman as he flourishes in the country, upright and honest, healthy, dogmatic, moral—rather stupid. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

17 " Love is a madness that seizes one and shakes one like a leaf in the wind. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

18 " Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes; "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

19 " People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic: they want to modify your tritest observations, and even if you suggest that the day is fine insist on arguing it out. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection

20 " Gray warehouses which lined the river, and the factories, announced the commerce of a mighty nation; and the spirit of Charles Dickens gave to the passing scenes a fresh delight. How could they be prosaic when the great master had described them? "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The W. Somerset Maugham Collection